We have to talk about Android Canary & Beta releases. I talked to a bunch of people here and there, and no one seems to understand what's going on. Both developers and users are confused.
Note:
Before I write about all of this, this post will indeed mention Android 17, but will go beyond Android 17.
-----
As of today, we have Android stable builds, Android Canary builds, QPR Beta builds, and next Android version Beta builds.
Let's see what the latest build of each currently are:
Stable: Android 16, API 36.1 (CP1A.260505.005)
Canary: Android 17, API 37.0 (ZP11.260417.009)
Next Beta: Superseded by QPR Beta.
QPR Beta: Android 17 QPR1 Beta 3, API 37.1 (CP31.260508.005).
Here's a list of all the issues I could see, both as a user, and as a developer.
Issues as both a user and a developer:
1. During the Google I/O, Android 17 RC1 was mentioned. What is this? We've never heard of it before and it was presented as if we were supposed to know about it.
Issues as a user:
1. You've released Android 17 QPR1 Beta without telling users if they should upgrade or not. Will the release of Android 17 be "QPR0", or will it be QPR1 (SDK 37.1) directly?
2. Will users having installed QPR1 have to reset their phone to switch to Android 17?
Issues as a developer (Hi
@AndroidDev):
1. Android Canary was created to replace Developer Previews. They are meant for developers, yet Android Canary updates are missing API Diffs and references. Meaning that during all this time Android Canary builds, despite being meant for developers, they provide no advantage to developers in comparison to Android Betas. As a matter of fact...
2. The last Android Canary is older than the Android QPR1 Beta 3, but even when the last Android Canary was released it was already older than the Android QPR1 Beta 2. So what's the point of the Android Canary, if it's not a canary build?
3. The QPR1 is officially API 37.1 yet there's no official stable build of Android out there with API 37. Should developers target API 37.1 directly and skip 37 entirely? But also, API Diffs and references are missing for this API too. Where are they?
4. The SDK Manager in
@AndroidStudio is a mess right now, especially if you've installed SDK Platforms that are now removed. It contains SDK 37.1-beta3, which we can install but don't have the docs of. 37.1-beta2, same thing. canary-20260413: still no docs. Multiple unversioned Canary Previews, etc.